TYPE CURVES FOR ESTIMATING THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF STABILIZED WASTE-DISPOSAL SITES ON GROUNDWATER

This paper presents analytical solutions for estimating the potential impact of waste disposal sites (landfills) on groundwater. The solutio ns yield estimates of the average groundwater concentrations in an aqu ifer located below the landfill, and of the pollutant flux at the inte rface between a mineral barrier and the aquifer. Several source bounda ry conditions are considered: a constant source concentration, an expo nentially decreasing source concentration, and a source concentration that is controlled by the diffusive release of pollutants from the was te. The latter is of particular relevance to the case of stabilized-wa ste landfills. The solution for the case of stabilized-waste is compar ed to two numerical models, and developed in terms of dimensionless va riables that are combinations of the real model parameters. These vari ables are then used to generate type curves for estimating peak aquife r concentrations. An example application of the proposed type curves i llustrates their usefulness for evaluating the performance of stabiliz ed-waste landfills, in terms of potential impact, for different landfi ll designs.